Rampart’s Avenir Communities Teams With Cisco to Build Canada’s First Smart+Connected Community

November 04, 2011

Vancouver, BC, November 3, 2011 – Rampart's Avenir™ Communities Ltd. and Cisco® today announced they are collaborating in the development of the Rampart's Avenir Community in St. Albert, part of the Edmonton Capital Region of Alberta. Together, Rampart and Cisco will direct the planning, design, construction and operations to create the new 400 acre Smart+Connected Community.

"Imagine living in a high quality community with a vibrant village center and unprecedented outdoor and indoor recreational facilities," said Gerry J. De Klerk, CEO, Rampart Group of companies. "Built on a digital platform residents can work from within their community and travel to work on the digital highway. This Smart+Connected Community will be a leader in significantly reducing costs for employers and taxpayers while simultaneously reducing the carbon footprint. Avenir will provide the best of digital connectivity and a state of the art transportation hub making physical travel as simple as a digital connection. The data utility's advanced data management systems will make the Avenir™ community a model for continuous improvement in the use of community resources. This capability will be relying on the development of a one gigabit per second data utility infrastructure that provides residents and businesses access to the rapidly expanding digital world."

"The success of a sustainable community depends on its ability to continuously improve its use of resources and access to services," explained the Mayor of St. Albert, AB, Nolan Crouse. "The community has to attract business and innovation through a vibrant economic hub. St. Albert is focussed on the development of new, more efficient methods of providing services and attracting business. St. Albert is recognized as the best place in Canada to raise a family and is one of the top five safest cities in Canada. Our goal is to extend St. Albert's image to being the best place in Canada to work and operate a business."

"Rampart's Avenir is a perfect blank canvas in an ideal economic and geographic environment to design and implement the Smart+Connected Communities concepts and solutions," said Rick Huijbregts, vice president of Smart+Connected Communities at Cisco Canada. "At Avenir, the network will be the platform for innovation, economic and environmental sustainability and the creation of new business opportunities in an information centric world. We look forward to sharing our global expertise and bringing together our global and local partner eco-systems to Avenir and the region as a whole"

Project Highlights:

A $1.8 Billion new community where 10,000 residents and commercial enterprises will have access to the highest technological and environmental standards providing unprecedented value to those in the community. The design, quality, technological and environmental features will provide a flexible living experience that will cater to a diverse range of residents while setting the standard for future living.

The community will be based on Cisco's Smart+Connected Real Estate solutions whereby security, building automation, home automation, voice, video and data and IT services all converge on a single platform. Cisco's Smart+Connected Communities Solutions deliver new and innovative services to home owners, as well as opportunities and efficiencies in health care, education and clean technology. Cisco is helping many cities, towns and villages around the world to change the way they are designed, built and managed.

At Rampart's Avenir all services, business and residential as well as community experiences will be based on an ultra high speed network infrastructure. This so called "Data Utility" will connect the people and the features within the boundaries of Rampart's Avenir. This community connectivity facilitates the ability to continuously improve the use of resources and access to services. This network is intended to reach into the city of St. Albert, neighbouring communities and businesses in order to provide unprecedented business, research, socio-economic and environmental opportunities. The network will also connect the community to Alberta's Supernet.

The community will be a place to live, work, recreate, where workers services can be provided to surrounding regions through the use of a data technology platform reducing the reliance on physical worksite presence. As a result Rampart's Avenir Community is destined to be a vibrant hub for economic development in the Capital Region and the province at large.

An innovativeSmart Work Center, serving as a physical and virtual connection point with resource development projects in western and northern Canada is featured in the development. This center will enable residents to go to work at locations well outside the community without actually physically leaving the community.

About RampartRampart's Avenir™ Communities Ltd. is a $1.8 Billion advanced clean technology community development to be located in the City of St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. The development brings to the community clear and viable opportunities for economic growth, increased quality of life and prosperity as well as investment for Alberta's Capital Region. Rampart's Avenir™ Communities Ltd is a member of the Rampart Group of Companies.